


i'm ready if it happens with you

by 152glasslippers



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Future Fic, POV Alternating, Post-Season/Series 04, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-02-03 02:22:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12739065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/152glasslippers/pseuds/152glasslippers
Summary: “What if I went with you?” She asked the question like she was continuing their conversation, but they weren’t having one. She had just been standing there while he worked, both of them silent.Her presence alone was comforting, and it was one of his favorite things about her, the way she would just be there. With him. It felt like making up for lost time.Future/Road Trip/Established Relationship AU. Robbie, who’s teamed up with Shield since his return from wherever dimension he’d been, decides to take a break from Shield to go back home to LA. Daisy goes with him, and they take the long way there. (Expect lots o’ fluff n’ feels.) Alternating POV.





	i'm ready if it happens with you

“Sunbathing?”

He walked out of the garage and into the parking lot to the sight of Daisy spread out across the roof of the Charger, the soles of her boots flat against the top of the car, her legs bent at the knee, her arms stretched straight behind her head. The knuckles of her fingers reached just past the edge of the roof. Her eyes were closed.

“Seemed a shame to waste the opportunity.”

“You’re lucky the car likes you.”

She turned on her side toward him, straightening her legs and propping herself up on her elbow, her hand sliding into her hair. His eyes followed the line of her body from her fingers to the toes of her boots, hanging in the air above the windshield.

“I’d say the car’s not the only one.”

He met her eyes, taking a deep breath. His skin felt hot. He could blame it on the sun, but he’d be lying.

“It’s not.” He tilted his head at her, a grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. “But you knew that already.”

Daisy’s smile was somewhere between smug and surprised, like she did know it, but she wasn’t used to hearing it yet.

She sat up and swung her legs over the passenger side of the car, still smiling. Robbie lifted a hand, and she took it, jumping down and using the momentum from her landing to bounce up on her toes and kiss him, letting go of his hand to throw her arm around his neck. Her other hand found his cheek, and he wrapped his arm around her back, pressing her closer.

When she pulled away, she didn’t go far, just enough to look him in the eye.

“Get what you needed?” she asked, motioning with her head to the box in his other arm. He nodded. “Good.” She gave him another kiss, quick this time, then disentangled herself from him, turning to the passenger door and reaching for the handle. “Let’s hit the road.”

She settled in and pulled the door shut, her flannel-clad arm resting on the window frame. The sun caught the lighter colors in her hair, her natural brown fully grown in now. She craned her neck to look at him when she realized he was still standing there. She squinted against the sun.

“What?”

The heat from his skin had settled in his chest.

“You look good with this car, chica.”

Her expression softened at his words, and this smile was something fond, with something slightly seductive just underneath. She dropped her chin onto her arm.

“I look good with the driver, too.”

\---

The road trip had been her idea.

May’s too, kind of.

And, well, technically it had been Robbie’s. He’d told her he needed to take a break from Shield for a couple of months, go back to LA, check on Gabe, spend some time with him.

“And then I’ll be back,” he’d said, a serious look in his eyes.

He always came back.

May was the one who’d suggested she go with him. She was perched in her usual spot on the edge of Coulson’s desk when Daisy went to tell him about Robbie’s plan. Robbie had wanted to avoid any conversation that felt like asking permission, which she understood. What she didn’t say was that Robbie had won Coulson over to the point where he’d probably agree to anything Robbie needed.

“Why don’t you go with him?” May asked her. Coulson didn’t even have a chance to open his mouth.

“What do you mean?”

“Take a break, a vacation. You deserve some time away from all of this. You deserve the time together.” There was something behind May’s eyes that told Daisy she was thinking of her trip with Andrew, but she glanced at Coulson when she said it.

Daisy opened her mouth to argue, but May cut her off. “It’ll be good for you.”

She looked over at Coulson.

“May’s right. And you’ve more than earned it. We’ll still be here when you get back.”

So, vacation it was, then.

Zephyr One could have dropped her and Robbie off in LA with the Charger, but two days before they were supposed to leave, she woke up with the idea of a road trip. There was something about the idea of traveling for its own sake, not just relocating for the next mission or the next foster home. She wanted the crappy motel rooms in the middle of nowhere, but with someone, not alone. Not on the run. The long hours of driving a chance to watch the world roll past her window, not an act of necessity.

To be moving, but idle.

Robbie had taken zero convincing, and since they were going, decided to stop at a few shops and garages on the way to pick up parts for the guys at Canelo’s. But beyond that, when they left the base, it was without much planning. A bag for each of them in the trunk and Robbie’s jacket spread out across the back seat, his gloves in the console between them. His chain on the floor behind her; her gauntlets in a case behind him.

\---

When Daisy asked him, he was in the hangar, bent under the hood of the Charger. It lived there now, with the rest of Shield’s vehicles. But he’d told Mack, “I’ll do the work on it. No offense.”

Mack had raised his hands in front of him, palms out, laughter and relief mixing on his face. “None taken.”

Coulson had turned to Mack in disbelief bordering on outrage. “Really? That’s all it takes? I won’t let you work on my car and I get nothing but grief for years, but he says no and you say ‘okay’? Just like that?”

Mack had shrugged a little, unaffected. “You’re a lot less scary than the other guy.”

Robbie was still getting used to hearing people mention the Rider so casually after carrying it around alone—necessarily, desperately a secret—for so long. But he didn’t mind it. It lifted some of the tension that used to spike whenever he entered a room.

“What if I went with you?” She asked the question like she was continuing their conversation, but they weren’t having one. She had just been standing there while he worked, both of them silent.

Her presence alone was comforting, and it was one of his favorite things about her, the way she would just _be_ there. With him. It felt like making up for lost time.

“What?” He kept working. She was leaning against the car in front of the driver’s side door, her back tucked against the side view mirror, still in her workout clothes from training. He could only see about twelve inches of her, from her lower torso to the tops of her legs.

It wasn’t until a minute later he realized that was intentional.

“To LA. What if I went with you.”

That made him stop.

He came out from under the hood, stepped to the side so he was standing right in front of her. Her arms were folded across her chest, and the look in her eyes delicately neutral, her face carefully expressionless. He took in the tension in her body and the reason behind it in the same instant: She was nervous, and trying to hide it.

Neither were looks she usually wore with him.

“You serious? You’d take a break from Shield? Come with me?”

She shrugged, playing it casual. “I think I’m due a vacation.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Come with me.”

If possible, she went even more tense. “Really?”

He wanted to wipe every inch of doubt from her face. “ _Yes_.”

“You’re sure?”

His smile was close to hurting. He never smiled like this anymore, not even around Gabe. Before Gabe knew his secret, every smile was dragged down with the weight of it, and now that he did know, each smile was still tainted by the fact that he wasn’t the same big brother anymore, that he never could be.

But Daisy had never known him without the Rider. She’d been looking for the Rider when she met him, and she’d learned they were one in the same not five minutes later.

And she chose him anyway.

“I’m not going to change my mind.”

She finally returned his smile then, taking a step forward and throwing her arms around his neck. She stood on her tiptoes, her hands clutching his back, her face against his.

“I’m holding you to that.”

He closed his arms around her carefully, aware of the state of his clothes, his hands. “I’m covered in grease, chica.”

She turned her head, pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I don’t care.”

He held her tighter.

\---

Their exit off the interstate dropped them in the middle of a four-lane highway, strip malls of restaurants and outlet stores lining either side of the road. 70’s rock filtered through the car’s speakers, an old song Robbie said he recognized from when he was a kid, something Eli had played for them. He never called him uncle anymore.

They pulled up behind a string of cars stopped at a red light. She looked out the passenger window, Robbie lightly tapping his thumb against the steering wheel next to her, his voice catching a few of the lyrics, singing them softly. Her eyes stopped on the third storefront from the end. Belfry Arcade.

Her voice, all those months ago in Canelo’s, echoed through her head. _The two of us used to hit up the Moonraker Arcade down in Little Tokyo._ She had a sudden wish to make it true.

“Robbie.” Her eyes were on the arcade windows, the fluorescent OPEN sign. She saw him move his head out of the corner of her eye, and she turned to looked at him. She tilted her head in the direction of the arcade. “Wanna go?”

His gaze slid past her face, over her shoulder and out the window behind her. She saw the exact moment his eyes settled on the arcade. For a fraction of a second, he went completely still, and she knew he was hearing her voice, too. _The stories I could tell. We used to go there every day after school._

When he met her eyes again, she could see the beginning of a smile forming on his face, the tell-tale twitch in his jaw. He flicked the right turn signal on without looking away.

Five minutes later, they opened the glass door of the arcade into a large, dimly lit open space. A maze of game consoles from wall to wall. They were the oldest people in the place by far—at least ten years older than the kid behind the counter—but walking in, Daisy felt fifteen again. A fifteen she’d never been. A fifteen she’d only ever seen in movies.

But she wasn’t fifteen, she was a highly trained Shield agent, and she kicked Robbie’s ass in every shooting game in the place. In return, he showed her up in every game that had any kind of wheel attached to it or anything to do with driving. They wound their way through the room, stopping at almost every game, even hitting up the small snack stand in the corner for a slushie.

“I cannot _believe_ you like blue raspberry the best. Cherry all the way.”

“No way. Cherry’s boring, girl.”

“It’s not even a real flavor! Blue raspberries don’t exist.”

“Maybe not here they don’t.”

She stopped in front of the slushie machine, cup in hand, and raised her eyebrows at him. “Really? An alternate dimension with blue raspberries? And you’ve been there?”

He met her gaze steadily, that challenging look on his face. Jaw set, eyebrows quirked slightly, and that look in his eyes. Deceptively innocent, and at the same time, somehow daring you to push him.

She narrowed her eyes at him. There was no way he was telling the truth. Not even remotely possible.

But he was still standing there, not budging. And the longer he stood there, the more she started to think…

“No. No way. I call bullshit.”

Robbie flashed her a smile. “Almost got you.” He snagged the empty cup from her hands and turned to the machine, opting for a mix of blue raspberry and cherry. She smiled at the compromise, even if it ended up tasting disgusting.

“It shouldn’t have even taken me that long. You never go anywhere nice enough for raspberries.”

He popped a lid on the slushie, threw a straw into it, and handed it to her.

“You never know.” He draped his arm across her shoulders, pulling her into him. “Could have been the devil’s favorite flavor.”

“It would explain why you like it so much.”

She eyed him carefully, worried she’d maybe gone too far, but he laughed, and it was her favorite kind: laughter that took him by surprise. Surprise that he could laugh about anything anymore, that he could laugh about this, the Rider. She wrapped her arm around his waist, and he kissed the top of her head, still laughing.

She took a cautious sip of the slushie. Not bad. Could be a new favorite.

\---

He used the last of their quarters to buy her a temporary tattoo from the vending machine next to the door on their way out. He flipped open the cardboard sleeve while she sipped the last of their slushie. He looked at the tattoo and then stared at it. Too long. Long enough for Daisy to notice.

“Robbie? You okay?”

He handed her the tattoo—a length of chain intertwined with flames, clearly meant to wind around your wrist or ankle—without a word.

She looked at it, and in the next second, burst out laughing, loud enough for the kid behind the counter and three other people to stare at them. She met his eyes, and he struggled to keep a straight face.

“It’s not funny.”

She was laughing too hard to say anything. She was still laughing when they pulled back onto the highway.

But when she crawled into bed that night, he caught a glimpse of it—chain and flame—wrapped around her right ankle.

He fell asleep smiling.

\---

For a random motel off a random highway in the middle of nowhere, the shower had amazing water pressure. Daisy tipped her head back into the steady stream of hot water, basking in the simple luxury of it.

She was waiting to feel restless, to feel bored. To be sick of this. Any of it, all of it.

But she wasn’t. And she was beginning to think she never would.

Far in the back of her mind, Shield was still there, and she knew neither she nor Robbie would ever be able to walk away from that fight— _the_ fight—but Coulson was right: It would always be there. And right now, she had this. Robbie, and their uninterrupted time together, these selfish hours making up for the months he’d lost.

They’d both lost.

She stepped out of the shower and wrapped herself in a towel, eying the empty counter next to the sink. She’d forgotten her underwear and her pajamas in the other room.

Robbie was sitting up in bed, reading a book on the history of muscle cars—a gift from Coulson—but he looked up when she walked in. She went straight for her bag on the luggage rack.

“Forgot my pajamas,” she said by way of explanation and started digging around in her bag. She pulled them out, triumphant, and turned around.

Robbie was still watching her.

He immediately dropped his eyes back down to his book, and the skin of his neck flushed red, like he was embarrassed to be caught staring.

They’d been together months now. And it’d been many months before that of circling each other—choosing each other—without saying anything about it.

Because she knew now that’s what they’d been doing every time they’d come back and found each other.

But Robbie was still sometimes shy with her, as shy as he’d been that first time he’d dimension-hopped back to her, his shoulders hunched forward, unable to take that step toward her. _I’m here now. And that’s good._

It was ridiculously endearing.

But she didn’t feel shy tonight, so she padded across the carpet, still in her towel, pajamas in hand, until she was standing beside the bed, right next to him. He was still staring at his book. She lay a hand on the open page.

“May I?”

He looked at her. She saw him swallow.

“Yeah.” His voice was low, almost inaudible.

She closed the book and put it on the nightstand. Dropped her pajamas from her other hand, never taking her eyes off of him. She climbed into his lap, her legs around his hips, her towel pulling where it was tucked around her, but not falling open.

Not yet.

Robbie’s eyes had moved from her face to somewhere near her collarbone but hadn’t dropped further. She felt his fingers twitch where his hands had automatically settled on her hips. She reached for his right hand, brought it up to the edge of the towel against her chest. He looked back up at her, a question in his eyes, but she just held him there for a minute. She could hear his heart pounding, hear the rhythm, the vibration of it, and she could feel her own beneath their hands, doing the same.

It wasn’t nerves. It was the closeness of him. The thrill of it. Still.

“You’re allowed to look.” There was a wryness to her voice, a gentle teasing, but it came out in a whisper, a secret just for them.

She lifted her hand from Robbie’s. His decision.

His eyes stayed on hers as he tugged at the edge of her towel and it fell open, pooling around her legs, into his lap.

Her pajamas stayed on the floor for the rest of the night.

\---

Sleep still felt like a luxury, and sleeping in, an indulgence. So, waking up next to Daisy? Unbelievable.

He was up before her most days. Even on the days she woke up early to train with May, he was usually awake, like his body wasn’t used to sleep anymore. But he could never bring himself to get out of bed without her. Why leave when he could stay with her? Sometimes he would fall back asleep, but mostly he just lay there, listening to her breathe, watching her sleep.

There was an insanity to how much he loved it.

Daisy wasn’t a dainty sleeper. There was a fierceness to her sleep that matched her waking hours. She gave herself over to it completely: Hair tossed in her face, body entirely limp, limbs at angles that looked the farthest thing from comfortable. He knew sleeping was the only time she didn’t have to hear the vibrations of everything around her. She never said so, but it drained her. She slept heavily.

He didn’t envy her sleep. He wanted it for her.

It was early enough that the sun was only just beginning to creep past the curtains of their motel room, casting everything in a gray half-light. Daisy was lying on her stomach, her head turned toward him, sunken into her pillow. He couldn’t see her face through her hair.

He had a strange feeling of peace.

He didn’t know why the Rider was so calm inside him, but it hadn’t been through any conscious act of his own. It had been quiet for some time now. Even stranger, there was no urge to seek out a threat or to finish one off. The Rider was biding its time—not patient, exactly, but not on edge, either. Expectant. And until whatever it was waiting for arrived, Robbie’s life, it seemed, was his to lead, the devil merely simmering in the background.

Daisy shifted next to him, reaching out her arm, her left hand barely touching his chest right above his heartbeat. She hadn’t opened her eyes, and he hadn’t moved an inch. But she could tell he was awake without looking.

“What time is it?”

He twisted away from her, toward the bedside table.

“5:45.”

Her hand moved from his chest to his cheek, turning his face back to her, his body back to the bed.

“Then it’s too early to be awake.” Her words were gentle and warm, but they tugged at him, pulling him into her.

She had scooted closer to him, her head on the edge of her pillow now, her eyes still closed. She left her hand on his cheek. It was a different kind of heat than his body produced, a softer heat. He let it lull him back to sleep.

\---

They were driving on the straightest road she’d ever seen, and the desert night was dark and clear and infinite around them. She was wearing her old black jeans and one of the mesh shirts she’d lived in back when she’d first met Robbie. She watched him in the driver’s seat, jacket zipped to his collar, eyes forward on the road, but relaxed, content. At peace.

It was the kind of night they might have had a long time ago, if they were normal.

Then again, if they were normal, they might never have met. Of the two options, that seemed by far the greater loss. And here they were anyway, Inhuman and possessed, and they still got to have a night like this.

The thought made her inexplicably happy.

She rolled down her window, and the rush of wind matched her rush of joy, and before she could think twice about it, she unbuckled her belt and twisted in her seat, grabbing on to the window frame and lifting her torso up and out.

She saw Robbie turn his head in her direction, and she flashed a grin at him before she bent backwards at the waist, letting the world turn upside down. She stretched her arms out on either side, and she became part of the night, the air coursing in between her fingers, sweeping through her hair dangling underneath her.

She felt fingertips on her waist, and she pulled herself upright. Robbie had two fingers hooked through one of her belt loops, his thumb resting on the skin below the hemline of her shirt. He was watching the road, but as if he could feel her eyes on him, he turned to look at her.

There was a smile in his voice as it hovered just above the noise. “Just in case.”

They studied each other, a moment of appreciation passing between them, and she dropped herself back out the window, into the wind.

If she were to lose her balance and slip out, she could quake herself to safety. And Robbie knew that. But he kept his fingers wrapped around her the whole time anyway.

The air felt fresher and she felt freer, knowing there was someone else to catch her should she fall.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
